Excerpted from Retta Graham’s personal journal.
Tracy Jacob Smith [1894-1935] is my father’s father. There is very little known about him except for what my grandmother, Retta Graham, wrote in her journal.
Tracy was a war veteran, a farmer, and a mine engineer. He was a father of five.
He died of pneumonia in March of 1935.
I hope you enjoy reading this story of how my Grandmother Retta and Grandfather Tracy got together.
[Transcribed from Retta’s journal, written in her own hand, in the late 1970s. No care was taken to correct spelling or grammar. Here she describes her meeting and marrying Tracy Smith]
[In 1916] There were not many families lives in Midview [Utah] but one of the most important families was the C. W. Smith [KWCY-PKT] family. They were a large family and one of the first families in Midview. When they first moved out to Midview there was no school for the kids. They had to go to Vernal for the school year.
The two older Smith boys, Tracy [KWCR-DK7] & Charlie [KW8N-ZWS] carried the mail to Red Cap and Midview from Duchesne. They used a white top buggy for that purpose and Wilma, Iretta, and me used to watch for that white top buggy to appear over the hill and then two of us used to dash over the hill to Burgeners, the Bishop & Postmaster and we would wait for the mail to be distributed and wait for Tracy or Charley to ask us to ride up the hill.
Tracy was seven years older than me, but I felt like he was the one for me.
On April 1st [April 6, 1917] World War was declared and Tracy went to the service (Navy). He had been in the service and was in reserve so when war was declared he had to go back.
I really felt so bad to see him go. He wrote to me every week. He was stationed at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands.
[In 1917] I went to Lehi to go to school and also to help my Uncle T. J. [Thomas Joseph Peck, [KWVH-GS1] who was sick with a heart condition. He had to be sent from his mission in Leeds, England after serving just nine months. So my uncle, my grandmother, and myself lived to-gether that winter. I was just 15 years old then.
[In 1918] When I was 16 yrs old he [Tracy] sent me a ring and asked me to wait for him. I went home from Lehi that summer and got a job working for Mrs. Phillips. Her husband had a clothing store. I will never forget the new coat I bought from the Phillipps store. He wasn’t fair to me.
He [Mr. Phillips] charged me $45.00 for the coat and was only paying me $3.00 a week for doing house work, taking care of their 3 girls, and anything there was to do in the house. When I think of those things now it makes me really vexed to think of the way they just put it over us with their cheap wages yet couldn’t cut down on the price of merchandise.
I was with that family for over a year. In the mean time Tracy sent me an engagement ring from Honolulu.
I did go out with boy friends and had a lot of good friends, both boys and girls but I knew Tracy was the one I wanted.
He came home from Pearl Harbor a day or two before Christmas in 1919.
We were married Feb 17, 1920 and lived over to Roosevelt at first.